Corinne, Corinne! am I not a parricide? Tell me."--"No," she cried, "no; you are only unfortunate; your generosity involved you. I respect as much as I love you; judge yourself by my heart; make that your conscience! Your grief distracts you: believe one who loves you from no illusion--it is because you are the best, the most affectionate of men, that I adore you."--"Corinne," said Oswald, "these tributes are not due to me; though, perhaps, I am less guilty than I think; my father pardoned me before he died. I found the last address he wrote me full of tenderness. A letter from me had reached him, somewhat to my justification; but the evil was done; his heart was broken. When I returned to the Hall, his old servants thronged round me; I repulsed their consolations, and accused myself to them. I knelt at his tomb, swearing, if time for atonement yet were left me, that I would never marry without his consent. Alas! I promised to one who was no more; what now availed my ravings? I ought, at least, to consider them as engagements to do nothing which he would have disapproved had he lived. Corinne, dear love! why are you thus depressed? He might command me to renounce a woman who owed to her own artifice the power she exerted over me; but the most sincere, natural, and generous of her sex, for whom I feel my first true love, which purifies instead of misguiding my soul, why should a heavenly being wish to separate me from her? "On entering my father's room, I saw his cloak, his footstool, and his sword still in their wonted stations, though his place was vacant, and I called on him in vain. This memento of his thoughts alone replied. You already know a part of it," Oswald added, giving the manuscript to Corinne. "Read what he wrote on the Duty of Children to their Parents: your sweet voice, perhaps, may familarize me with the words." She thus obeyed:---- "Ah, how slight a cause will teach self-mistrust to a father or mother in the decline of life! They are easily taught that they are no longer wanted on earth. What use can they believe themselves to you, who no longer ask their advice! ye live but in the present; ye are wedded to it by your passions, and all that belongs not to that present appears to you superannuated;--ye are so much occupied by your young hearts and minds, that, making your own day your point of history, the eternal resemblances between men and their times escape your attention. The authority of experience seems but a vain fiction, formed for the credulity of age, as the last enjoyment of its self-love. What an error is this!